The Moonlight Sonata

She sat down again and played Beethoven's Sonata in cis-moll, which was not on the programme. There is, I believe, no composition in the whole world that shows with the same distinctness the soul torn by tragic conflict; especially in the third movement of the Sonata, the Presto-agitato. I am not a musician, but I suppose even musicians do not know how much there is in that Sonata. I cannot find another word than "oppressiveness" to describe the sensation wrought upon the audience. One had a feeling as if mystical rites were being performed; there rose before me a vast desert, not of this world, weird and unutterably sad, without shape, half lit up by a ghostly moon, in the midst of which hopeless despair waited and sobbed and tore its hair. It was terrible and impressive because so unearthly; and yet irresistibly attractive,—never had my spirit come in such close proximity to the infinite. I imagined that in the shapeless desert, in the dusk of a world of shadows, I was searching for somebody dearer to me than the whole world, one without whom I could not and would not live, and I searched with the conviction that I should have to search forever and never find what I was looking for. My heart was so oppressed that at times I could scarcely breathe.

When she left off playing there was a great hush in that crowd, as if they expected something, or were benumbed by sorrow, or tried to catch the last echo of sobbing despair, carried away by a wind from the other world.

I went with the others to press her hands. From the first moment of our acquaintance Clara had always addressed me in French; now for the first time, returning the pressure of my hand, she said in German:

"Haben Sie mich verstanden?" [Do you understand me?]

"Ja," I replied, "und ich war sehr unglücklich!" [Yes, and I was very unhappy.] And it was true.

—Henryk Sienkiewicz, Without Dogma.